He was one of the last two Companions of the Song, with Michel Cassez, known as “Gaston”, the youngest, now 88 years old. Marc Herrand, who will have celebrated his 98th birthday on May 9, has left us. The announcement made by AFP journalist Jean-François Guyot was confirmed by the music site Pure Charts. This historical companion-singer was the first musical director and arranger of this formation founded in February 1946. And it was this same year that she recorded with the Môme Piaf Les Trois Cloches de Jean Villard, a choral song which will go around of the world.
Born Marc Holtz on May 9, 1925, the future chorister and arranger joined the troupe Les Compagnons de la Musique created by Louis Liébard at the age of sixteen. It was in 1946 that he formed the famous Compagnons de la chanson with eight of his friends. Luck smiled on them since a few months later, the first nine members of the group immortalized Les Trois Cloches written and composed by the singer Jean Villard dit “Gilles”.
La Môme Piaf and the Compagnons de la Chanson sing Les Trois Cloches
From 1946 to 1952, he participated as a chorister and arranger in the great epic of the Compagnons de la chanson. Together, they make a great tour in the United States and in many regions around the world. An expert in composition for cannon singing, he would sign the orchestration of the great successes of the time such as The king has drumbeat and The prisoner of the tower, sung like The Three Bells with the unforgettable Edith Piaf.
Yvette Giraud (1916 – 2014) sings The Soul of Poets by Charles Trenet
He left the Compagnons in 1952 to become the arranger of the songs of his great love, the singer Yvette Giraud, with whom he lived for more than half a century. Under her aegis, she will resume Charles Trénet’s The Soul of Poets who promises us that “Long after the poets have disappeared, their songs still run in the streets…” Verses, in short, which perfectly tell the soul as a chansonnier, in the noblest sense of the term, who animated the talented Marc Herrand all his life.
